It's about time.

As my favourite philosopher Calvin would say, "Auuugggh!!! Run!!!
It's a half an hour later than it was thirty minutes ago!!!"
This is a cable swatch/wristwatch band for a cheapo watch face.
Great project for kids, by the way.

It has been duly noted that I am a slacker. I have piles of books about which I'm supposed to pontificate, or at the very least give an opinion. I have finished objects that are actually being used (!) by family members for whom the phrase "Darling, you do remember that I knit you a pair of Fuzzy Feet and that they might, in fact, keep your feet warm on occasion if you remembered to PUT THEM ON" is a useful if not necessary reminder. But I have deadlines that have developed their own deadlines (and quite possibly have engendered an entirely new familial line in the process). I swear, my deadlines have babies the way socks lose their partners.

This is, I am convinced, a direct result of me walking around muttering the phrase "f*ing deadlines" to myself. They then proceed to do exactly that. Worse than rabbits, I'm telling you.

Life has been massively eventful since I've been not talking about it. I was on Global TV's This Morning Live a few weeks ago (the Montréal version), and taught Gelareh Darabi, the host, how to knit after her long hiatus from her very first project. She did very well, I did not swear on the air, and despite the Tammy Faye job the makeup artist did on my face, it was fun. (You see, I never, ever wear lipstick, but they thought I should. So my husband sent me an e-mail afterward with only one sentence: "What was up with the OMG WTF lips they put on you?" Never let a TV makeup artist do your lipstick unless you're curious about how you'd look as a porn queen or a TV evangelist's ex-wife. You have been warned.)

I have also been the recipient of one hell of a care package: I ordered a pin from one of my beloved favourite jewelry makers and fellow knitblogger, Ruth Stewart of Impulse of Delight. Well, I not only got the pin, but I got more of my favourite Waving Not Drowning Lush bath stuff, plus some black pearl stitch markers I've been dying to have, and a little amethyst heart stitch marker to boot. Except that she knows that I use stitch markers as jewelry for me, not my needles, so she sent me earring wires and a leather necklace to use for what she'd made for me. Here's one of her gorgeous stitch markers in its new role as my earring:

Girl with a pearl earring.
Ruth has re-inspired my love of dangly jewelry,
in addition to lifting my spirits mightily.

The books: I was going to do long, involved book reviews, but I'm not going to do that for two of them because they can pretty well be summed up in a few sentences.

First, the worst piece of drivel I've received in a very long time: Threadbared, by Kimberly Wrenn and Mary Watkins. They have a blog that goes by the same moniker. I'm not linking the book or the blog, because both of them piss me off too much. I still don't know why the publisher sent me their book. Frankly, I'd like to know why anyone thought I, as a dedicated knitter and spinner, would give a flying f*ck what two people who don't do a damned thing with their hands apart from forming a self congratulatory "L" on the forehead in our general direction, think of people who knit and sew.

On first glance, this book looks like another version of our beloved Stitchy McYarnpants's Museum of Kitschy Stitches (link after I rant, because Stitchy's book is good), promising witty banter on "Decades of Don'ts from the Sewing and Crafting World." What you get instead is an attempt to make anyone who ever picked up needles look like a complete idiot for doing so. And the self-conscious, heard-it-before-and-it's-still-dumb humour does nothing for me: for example, an entire page devoted to, giggle giggle, dissing a pattern from the 1950s because it describes teens as "gay."

Well, ladies, I hate to say it, but I'm entirely underwhelmed by your wit. Further, if you're going to talk strap-ons, freaking learn how to knit the strap first. You want good kitsch from someone who knows what to do with a needle, and hilarious text to go with it? Stitchy's your girl.

Next, we have Twinkle's Big City Knits, by Wenlan Chia. I link it just to show you the emaciated chick on the front cover. It never gets better inside the book. And because I try to be fair, and I realise I might sound like the chubby kid who resents hyperthin women for being that way, I took the book to my Friday night S&B, knowing that women younger and hipper than myself would be there. One woman actually had the book on her wish list, and is now taking it off, having looked through the book and discovered that there ain't nothing Big in this particular City except for the needles. Size 19 needles, people, for sweaters, on women who looked like x-rays wearing skin suits, and if your rack is bigger than a 33 or so, you're out of luck.

Some of the garment shapes were interesting, and I do realise that the designer comes from an haute couture background where women are a wee bit unreal in the flesh department, but every real person to whom I've shown this book has pronounced the entire collection unwearable, except for perhaps one hat. Yes, even the hyperthin real people. Also of note is the fact that the author never tells you just what kind of hell size 19 needles inflict on your hands if you use them for more than five minutes (trust me, it's painful), and unless you simply order roving, you're not going to be able to find yarn thick enough to make these garments.

I'm also not exactly drawn toward a designer who tells me that "anyone who can hold knitting needles" can make her garments. Honey, I do a hell of a lot more with my needles than just stick them in my shirt, and I encourage new knitters to resist the "Knit Quick and Dumb" trend. The sexy bikinis are the ones you do on tiny needles, kids. One stitch per boob is just not going to cut it in the long run, and we both know it, so get over it and start knitting something you can actually wear.

After all that bizarreness in my mailbox, it was a complete breath of fresh air to receive Cables Untangled by Melissa Leapman. I'm a cable geek, and I admit that, but even those of you who haven't yet done the twist are going to want that purse on page 102, and a few other cute basics besides. There's something for everyone in this book, from the reversible cable scarf to a two-colour pillow that I thought would actually make a really cool purse (can you tell that my current purse has exploded into a pile of tattered leather and old kleenex?). There are several sweaters that may not be off the charts for new ideas, but still look beautiful and wearable.

The book is, above all, a well-written and beautifully photographed introduction to the art of cabling. I still can't imagine knitting the rug in this book, though, because if I did, I might have to kill whomever walked on it, and I don't have the energy for that kind of carnage. But I do love a good stitch dictionary, and this book's got a fun one, divided into ribs, panels, and allover patterns that will make you want to search your cleavage for that errant cable needle and get busy.

So, the Big News Flash: Fuzzy Feet really are warm! Amazing! Alert to the nonknitters: if someone you love knitted you a pair of Fuzzy Feet and you are not only complaining about having cold feet but have also expressed a desire for handknitted socks to remedy that problem, you have no one to blame but yourself. In fact, someone in my very own house who has had a pair for a year, but only just realised what they actually were for, has pronounced them "extremely comfortable." Miracle of miracles. I might not have to knit him black socks after all.

I did, however, make the black scarf. Spiff's worn it every day since.
Just look at that sexy drape. Silk and merino, baby.

I tried the Berroco Kap pattern again just to see if I could get the floppy newsboy effect going on in drapey wool instead of cotton and viscose, and I still got the visor beanie effect instead. Yep, I got gauge. Yep, it's big enough for my head. No, it does not flop. I like it anyway, in large part because I knit it in Malabrigo merino, which is like wearing a kitten on your head, minus the claws, the incessant purring, and the occasional wet nose in your ear.

If I were to wear this hat the correct way,
according to the teenage knitter mandate,
I'd flip the brim up. I tried that.
Makes me look like a dork and inspires my husband
to tell everyone within hearing distance just how old I actually am.

My next project is a bustier. It makes for really hilarious waiting-room knitting...little old ladies ask me what I'm knitting and I actually tell them. I thought of lying and saying it's a sweater, but when I show them the picture (it's in Knitscene, a design by Robin Melanson), they think it's really cool. And after that, if Lucy Neatby has her way, I'm actually going to finish a pair of socks, or at the very least learn how to make a decent buttonhole. Stay tuned: sneaky knitting teachers who know where I live are onto me in a big way, and it's rumoured that I have sock yarn in my stash....

February 25, 2007 11:22 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (37)  | Print

Blogger's Silent Poetry Reading

Messengers Falling to Our Aid

Sometimes everything dazzles—broken glass
on the river bank, rain dimpling the sand.
But aren't there days you'd gladly slip like a dime

through the silver slats of the boardwalk
and dissolve in the pastel froth the tide swirls?
That's why, when noonlight suddenly obliterates

the surface of every leaf, we need a voice to linger
in our minds, whispering let go, or go on,
need lip-shaped window smudges where something

invisible has kissed us. Wind turning our clothes
inside out, coffee making a stranger's breath familiar—
clearly, not all messengers pour out vials

of destruction or braid glass chips into a saint's
leather belt. Some must be sent to teeter
on the edge of a smoke-filled room, watching

color spatter as the wheel revolves and light
plucks the fine grooves of a guitar's steel strings.
Were they supposed to tell us something?

It's all mixed up now with the singer's breath
deep in the mike, her lowered head,
hair falling over a half-whispered rasp,

collapse of ice cubes in an untouched glass,
a match scrape's millisecond of nothing,
and then—the blue birth of flame.

Betsy Sholl
from
Late Psalm

February 2, 2007 12:24 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (11)  | Print